Middle-earth: Shadow Of War Will Have Micro-Transactions

Oh no. Last week it was revealed that Middle-earth: Shadow Of War, the follow-up to Monolith’s 2014 hit Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor, will have micro-transactions. A premium currency, gold, will exist alongside the in-game currency, mithril, and can be used to purchase XP boosters as well as loot boxes.

You read that right, loot boxes. These comes in two varieties: Loot Chests for gear you can equip on player character Talion, and War Chests that gives you random Orc followers.

The full lowdown can be read here, but in essence they ensured that these micro-transactions only mean you can save time gaining good gear and Orc followers- all the items can be gained in-game through normal play and purchased with the mithril. Gold is also not tied exclusively to micro-transactions, in can be earned by playing the game and reaching specific milestones.

Having micro-transactions, and loot boxes, for items that will give you an advantage in a single-player game sounds a bit too much as seen in the various reactions of the news. It felt like the inclusion of unique gear to equip on Talion, a new feature for the sequel, is just to shove in micro-transactions into the game.

However, this is not the first time we saw Warner Bros. going this route. Injustice 2, a fighting game, also used loot boxes to award gear that changes stats. Thankfully, loot boxes were dropping generously without paying extra money (though they have patched to reduce the drop rate) and stats won’t taken into account in online ranked matches. As remarked in our review, the loot boxes worked in favour of the players.

But we will have to wait and see if this applies to Shadow Of War. The game will be out on October 10 for the PS4, PC and Xbox One.

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